Now, fans are calling him out for his “immature and pathetic” response.

Photo credit: Gregg DeGuire - Getty Images

Gather ’round, everybody, because we need to talk about some old Shawn Mendes tweets that he finally addressed during a fan Q&A session.

If you’re not a Shawn stan, you might have missed that he has some now-deleted racist tweets that go back to before he was the “Señorita” singer we know today. Reportedly, Shawn once tweeted, “I can see the black coming out in you Lauren!” in response to a friend’s message. He also reportedly tweeted, "Light skinned girls >>," "I'm black , burnt up ya knoe ," and captioned a photo with his friend with, “A regular day with mah n*gger Kareem.” (You can check out these reported old tweets and a photo of him calling his hair an Afro in a really bad and insensitive attempt at being funny over here.)

So, yeah, you can see why when a fan had the opportunity to ask him a question during a Q&A, she called them “ignorant” at best. She said, "Um, in the past there is a lot of kind of ignorant tweets I guess I could say. Why has it never been acknowledged? Or why has there never been anything about it?”

And Shawn responded with this statement:

“Yeah, of course. A lot of things just need to be moved on from, but I also think that the things that [you] saw, like I had friends when I was 14 who would like take my phone and post things of them because they thought it was funny that I had like 2,000 followers and it was this big thing, and they’d post photos of themselves and at the time I was just like not thinking about it. I had no idea I was going to have 50 million followers, which doesn’t make it any better. But um, yeah totally I apologize for everything insensitive I said in the past, but with that being said, yeah, I think that’s not my personality.”

“A lot of things I think need to be moved on from, but also I had friends when I was like 14 who would take my phone and post things of them and they thought it was funny...I apologize for everything.” pic.twitter.com/lP49WUzmXi

Now, the golden rule of apologizing is taking full responsibility for your actions. Like, anyone else hate when someone apologizes for something they did by saying things like “I’m sorry you feel that way” or tries to justify their actions instead of just owning up to it? It’s ~le worst~.

Anyway, that’s exactly what fans think Shawn just did by saying those tweets are a result of his friends taking control of his account and that the people who are offended should move on.

One fan said, “The fact that he refuses to take responsibility and blames it on ‘friends’ is incredibly immature and pathetic. Your actions are your fault, nobody else’s.” And others said they weren’t surprised by his response at all.

a fan asks shawn mendes about his racist tweets and he responds with “move on” i-

so why did i expect shawn mendes to know better than to begin his response to his past online racist fuckery w/ “i just think that, a lot of things need to be moved on from...” when he’s never addressed it? than go on to blame his friends for every single post made? lol yall.. pic.twitter.com/pK6axvMvCl